December 31, 2011

I'm Dreaming of a Pink Christmas

I helped my friend makeover her place for her first Christmas in her new apartment. Since she already had pink going on, we decided to create a pink Christmas- red and green would have clashed!

Who says Christmas has to be red and green? It's fun to be creative!
I pulled out all my pink and silver things and also had fun creating a couple things.

We set out to have the girliest Christmas ever and I think we accomplished it!

Here's the tree:


 Had some silver trees too:
Note the pink shoe ornaments on the tree!

 Closeup of tree:


Wall of love:


The mantle:



Made the pink crepe tree on the right, showed you how in my last post:



I made the wreath over the mantle- it takes some ribbon but it's easy!
All you do is tie bows over a styrofoam wreath form (I painted it pink first).

Hung this ornament from a doorway:


Loved the pink wreath and big bows in the couch area:



And here's the whole room, tah duh!


It was a girly Christmas, I loved how it turned out! 

You can't help but be happy in this room.

Hope you had a Merry Crafty Christmas too!

December 21, 2011

O Crepe Paper Tree

I am helping my friend make a pink and silver Christmas this year, it's been so much fun to find things for her living room..or make them! I love a vintage look and decided to make this little tree using 1) a foam cone, 2)  pink paint, 3) crepe paper streamers and 4) tin foil/hot glue. Really the only expensive thing is the cone, the roll of streamers was a buck!

I painted the cone pink in case any of it showed, it helps to water down the paint a little so that it gets in all the crevices of the styrofoam.

Take a length of streamer a bit longer than the circumference of the base of your cone, if it's too long you can snip it later on. I folded over the rough torn edge so that it wouldn't show, and then stretched the crepe paper along one edge, creating a ruffledy effect.

When using hot glue, PLEASE be careful- it's easy to burn yourself pushing the crepe paper down to the cone- paper doesn't offer much protection from hot glue.


See how it ruffles?

Using hot glue, tack down a folded over end for the bottom row. As you glue around, gather up the crepe paper so that it ruffles even more. When you get back around to your starting point, trim the edge and fold it under, gluing it so that it overlaps the starting point. 

Keep adding layers (getting even vertical spacing from the previous row is the hard part).

I hate making trees out of cones that bluntly end and do not make a nice point, so I made my own out of tin foil and hot glued it to the top of my cone. If it's not perfect, it's ok since the ruffles will hide imperfections. 



I then hot glued crepe paper around the tin foil so that there wouldn't be an obvious color difference between the ruffles that were over/under the tin foil. It also provided something more stable to glue to.


Added my final row, pinching it at the top. Try to not use much hot glue, you don't want it to show here.


And voila! A vintage looking crepe paper tree fit for a princess.

Crepe paper comes in so many wonderful colors- just think of the trees you could make!